Molly Murphy Mystery Book 21
Minotaur Books
March 11th, 2025
Silent as the Grave by Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles is a suspenseful historical novel. The book opens with a bang where the prologue immediately draws readers in.
“The prologue was done intentionally to grab the readers. We needed to have a lot of set up before something dramatic. It is a signal that said danger is coming. We wrote about a lamp falling, a fire, and the train scene. We had to figure out a way to get Molly involved in the mystery when she has a five-month-old baby. The accidents are a way to get her fully invested because someone has threatened her adopted daughter, Bridie’s life. The accidents happened to pull Molly in to solve the murder mystery.”
Molly is contending with raising her young son, a 5-month-old infant, and her 14-year-old adopted daughter, Bridie. Her good friend Ryan O’Hara invites Molly and the children to watch the film he is making. After one of the actresses is fired, Molly’s adopted daughter, Bridie, is called to replace her in the scene. Turns out she’s a natural and is asked to star in the rest of the film. Molly is skeptical about leaving Bridie alone on set, but her great friends, Sid and Gus, offer to chaperone her.
“Edison did steal inventions from other people. He was good in getting patents in his own name. There is proof that there was another movie, a film made of children, before Edison supposedly invented a movie camera. This makes more of the backdrop for an interesting mystery.”
“One of the characters, Alice Mann is based on a real person, a French woman, Alice Guy. She is listed as a secretary or assistant, but she is the one who came up with a lot of the innovations for cinematography. She invented the fade in/fade out by putting a cigar box over the lens of the camera and slowly opening it and closing it. Women did not get the accolades. Even today, how many female directors are there, not many? Look at the current Oscars regarding editing, directing, and producing it was all men.”
There are mishaps on the set, including a fire in the editing room and Bridie’s near escape with death while filming a difficult stunt. Molly believes that the mishaps are not just coincidences, but sabotage. She accepts the invitation to find out what happened, especially since Bridie almost died.
“In the early movies there were no stunt doubles, and the actors took enormous risks to get the perfect shot. When the Keystone Cops went around the bend in the moving truck as it swings around the corner, it was real. The train operator was never told there was a body on the tracks. People really did die.”
This is an engaging mystery with a bonus that readers learn more about the budding movie industry.
